What to study next

I have recently graduated with a 2 year degree - Information Security and Digital Forensics. I also have a data recovery cert, and am fairly skilled with data recovery and forensics.

Hacking is what I really would like to get into. Other than teaching stuff like ALC's/policies, methods to secure an operating system (like nsa.gov's docs), and a massive amount of vocabulary, I do not feel like there was anything realistic for penetration testing. The art of hacking, without hacking...

I also view linux and programming to be essential. I can understand pseudo code and programming logic, but I have no real programming experience. I have taken 2 linux classes (they used CentOS), plus a class on Bash shell scripting.

I have 3 potential projects lined up. I have 4-5 months of freedom before I have to use my computers/time to study for 2 forensics certifications. The 3 potential projects are: learn python, study for rhcp (red hat certified professional), or set up a small home network to test out exploits. These are all things I want to do no matter what, but I can not do everything at once if I am going to do it well.

RE: What to study next

The reason I said rhcp is because of my old Linux teacher. He said Linux+ is a Taco Bell certification, and is the same as RHCP cert minus a third of the material. A taco bell cert meaning at the job interview they say "So you're L+, that's cool... oh nice! and you worked at taco bell for 3 years."

It might lead to a Linux admin job, but from what I have seen they have heavy qualification requirements. Even if that weren't an issue, there's still only about half as many linux admin jobs as there are programming jobs. At least from what I've seen.

RE: What to study next

My dad worked for the NSA in the 90s. I guarantee their data is very secure and that they have some of the best security experts in the world.

You say you have no programming experience? I personally see Python becoming a business standard scripting language in the near future. Python is very powerful and very flexible. Knowing a powerful language like Python is very important.

So study up. Set aside some time and visit CodeAcademy. They teach you programming for free with an online sandbox to run your code in (Javascript, HTML/CSS, Python, Ruby, and jQuery). And each time you finish a challenge, they give you a new badge (to encourage you to do more).

It's pretty fun in my opinion.

10000101

Hellbound Hackers is the collective work of the staff and the community and is therefore licensed under the CC BY-NC-SA license.